Yeah this is probably the safest solution. I've done it with several games and have yet to face a problem with it.

Well, I don't have Stream account, but that is an excellent idea... But just thinking of downloading twice 10 GB with my crappy connection gives me anxiety attack.

But hell, that is brilliant...

Get a used hd7950/70/r9 280(x) or gtx 670/770 - and enjoy.

Built-in intel graphics are all garbage for current 3d, except Intel Iris.

Since those were apparently Steam games, Steam has an option to enable a FPS counter. Works even with non-Steam games if you run them through Steam, I did that in order to see what kind of framerates I get on my gaming laptop on e.g. The Witcher 3 (GOG version).

Yeah pretty much this. Anyway, to me the biggest positive suprise really was how good it is at running older (Windows) games where I might have serious compatibility issues with e.g. NVidia GPUs.

Oddly enough, this jump in backwards compatibility seemed to happen with some more recent Intel GPU drivers; with older drivers there were lots of compatibility issues. With NVidia drivers I am used to the opposite: newer drivers may break some older games.

Are there integrated Intel GPUs on desktop PCs nowadays? I assumed he is playing on a laptop (since he mentioned using integrated Intel HD graphics).

If mxm slot is available, why not? But yes, laptops have limited gpu upgrades, especially because ACPI may not support sensor read of the new card and in combination with dedicated gpu cooler (like on some alienware models) its asking for trouble. Although I have once replaced ancient mobility x1900 with hd4650 (mxm III -> mxm II) and it went fine.

Sure, I built one system with i3-3xxx recently, which relied on HD graphics.

If by "nowadays" you mean 2015-17 then 1151 socket supports it: and [url=http://geizhals.eu/?cat=mbp4_1151&asuch=&bpmax=&v=e&hloc=at&hloc=de&hloc=pl&hloc=uk&hloc=eu&plz=&dist=&mail=&fcols=7090&sort=t&bl1_id=30]motherboards.

If you also include 2015 and before, 1150, 1155 and 1156 also supported it.


Edit: found it! It was i3-3220 in msi matx mainboard (forgot which), given it 4 gigs of ram with 2 banks - which is more than enough for internet use and light gaming. Still thinking I should've used amd+asus instead...

The game is not listed on Intel's list of playable games.
https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/graphics-drivers/graphics-for-3rd-generation-intel-processors/000005659.html

That list is worthless.

Doesn't look too promising:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-2500.69812.0.html

Edit:
"Compared to the faster HD Graphics 4000, the 2500 one features less Execution Units (6 versus 16) and only one texture sampler. Therefore, the performance is clearly worse and only suited for low demanding gaming. Intel states a 10 to 15% higher performance compared to the old Sandy Bridge based HD Graphics 2000. Therefore, only older casual games with low requirements are playable with the HD 2500."

I know this is a crazy idea but mabye ask on the developer forums?

The reason why modern chips all support 3d is not because they are designed to play games.

Its because of how graphics engine of all mainstream OSes works. All of them handle window placements via compositing and use textures. This is contrast to old gdi/xorg model, where windows are plotted in 2d buffer by 2d functions.

This is why both intel and amd produce so low-level "3d" chips... they are not designed for "3d games". If they run two decade old 3d game, this is an unforseen bonus.